


They Have To Take You In (A Sheepish Story)

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Background Relationships, Book: The Dark is Rising, Gap Filler, Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones, Remix, Sheep, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 12:44:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <em>The Dark Is Rising</em>, the Black Rider calls the White Rider for help.  This is only amusing for one of them.  (Remix of "Strategic Sheep Purposes," by Gramarye.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Have To Take You In (A Sheepish Story)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gramarye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gramarye/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dark Is Rising Drabbles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/310673) by [Gramarye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gramarye/pseuds/Gramarye). 



> This fic is a remix of [Strategic Sheep Purposes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/310673/chapters/499349), which is posted on AO3 as chapter 36 of Gramarye's [Dark Is Rising Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/310673/chapters/497485). It caught my imagination partly because I love the idea of the Black Rider lying in a sheep field in the middle of nowhere, and partly because upon rereading the books I wondered why, despite all the mundane and magical ways she could have engineered her absence from Clwyd, the White Rider stayed completely out of the attempted rising in book two.
> 
> Thank you to MadameHardy for beta-reading!

The belling of Herne's hounds was impossible to miss that winter night, and come the morning the sun rose with what seemed an excessive air of smugness. Blodwen Rowlands stood outside her front door in the damp and trickling thaw, and watched the pale dawn sky with a fierce scowl on her normally pleasant face.

"Fools," she muttered to herself. "I said, did I not, that the time of the Rising is set. The time and the place, fixed by the High Magic in treaty these many ages ago, and any move to break the terms would only work to fulfill them. Now the candles of winter are lost and the Light has claimed the second of their Things of Power."

A drop of water fell from the eaves and ran down her neck like an icy finger. She tugged her wool coat up further over her shoulders and moved a half-step further from the house.

"Power spent for nothing," she said to the empty air. "Just the same as that grail nonsense this summer past. _A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing._ That is what you have to show for yourselves."

Behind her, the door swung open with a creak of protest from ageing hinges. "Tea's ready, _cariad_ ," John said. "Let the sky look after itself and come back in where it's warm."

Blodwen turned to greet her husband with a smile. "Dare we trust the sky that far? It's not done well by Britain this past fortnight."

John's answering smile creased and lit his weather-roughened face for a moment. "True enough. Shall I bring your cup outside for us to stand watch together?"

Blodwen glanced up at the sky once more, swept her eyes across its bright, cloudless expanse: the victory banner of the Light. The Hunt left no sign of its passing, and the other Lords of the Dark would contact her in time, once they pulled themselves from whatever cracks and crannies and distant lands the Hunt had chased them to.

"No," she said as the wind rattled through the icicles coating the eaves, shaking loose a brief curtain of silver between her and John, "No, the sky's beyond our power to change, and we'll get our fill of cold soon enough looking after the sheep. Let's go in where it's warm."

\---------------

After breakfast, Blodwen joined the men of Clwyd farm in carrying feed to pasture, in case the sudden thaw had swept any of the sheep away or mired them helplessly in the stiff, bone-chilling mud. Fortunately the worst of the freeze and thus the worst of the floods had been centered in England, not Wales, and so all was well. She left the men to their work and returned home to her own winter routine.

In the midafternoon, shortly after Bran Davies came over with his dog for biscuits and company while he scratched away at his algebra, she got a telephone call. This was somewhat unusual, but not to the point of concern. Most likely it was Gwyneth Lloyd calling yet again about the Women's Institute plans for repairing the roof of St. Cadfan's church. The diocese had agreed to pay half the cost, but the rest depended on contributions from the community. In Gwyneth's view, those contributions might as well come from the English tourists who flitted through Tywyn to gawk at the church and its stone, and she'd organized a little stall by the entry to sell crafts and foods at absurdly inflated prices. Blodwen had duly agreed to contribute two dozen jars of apple butter, the occasional skein of undyed yarn, and a pair of patchwork quilts, in whose progress Gwyneth had taken an irritating degree of interest.

"Rowlands," she said, tucking the receiver absently between her cheek and shoulder as she recrossed her narrow kitchen to keep an eye on the chicken bones and scraps she was cooking down for stock.

"This is a transatlantic reverse charge call," an operator said. "Do you accept?"

Blodwen pulled the telephone away from her ear and stared at it, startled. In her human life she knew nobody outside of Wales. John's acquaintance, though somewhat wider, was still restricted to this side of the ocean. And those of the Dark had no use for human technology amongst themselves.

But she remembered the belling of the hounds; the cruel purpose in Herne's eyes on the long-gone nights she had looked upward from her work to see the Hunt ride; the wretched, bedraggled misery of former quarries she had watched limping their way home from improbable distances. Power spent, she had said that very dawn. Perhaps she had spoken more truly than she'd known.

"I accept," she said.

There was a loud click as the operator connected the lines, and then a soft, persistent hiss of static through which a deep voice said, "Sister."

Blodwen closed her eyes and breathed out through her nose, long and slow, until the surge of wild laughter died silent in her throat. "One moment," she said, and turned to face the little kitchen table with a sham of worry on her face. "Bran, go outside."

The Pendragon looked up from his maths and frowned at her, a child's resentment of being shut out of adult affairs mixed with a trace of the High Magic's clear-sighted suspicion that eleven years of care and comfort had not quite allayed. "But--"

"Go find John and your father. Tell them my brother has called and I may need the car to sort some family business."

Grumbling, Bran packed up his schoolbooks and stamped out the door, slinging his winter coat over his shoulders as he went. His dog trailed behind like a sullen silver echo.

The White Rider cast spells of distraction and silence on her door and windows, in case curiosity got the better of the boy or John arrived before she had a story ready. Then she turned down the gas under the stockpot and let her mortal semblance fall away.

"I told you," she said, crisp and cold and scornful. "I told you there was no sense chasing after Signs. Let the Light have their Things of Power. We mold the hearts and minds of men; what need have we for petty tools? The final battle will come soon enough without you spending our strength on one meaningless skirmish after another."

On the other end of the line, the Black Rider snarled.

"You've lost your mount and drained your power, else you wouldn't stoop to human tricks," the White Rider continued. "But you may as well recover somewhere familiar. Tell me where you fled the Hunt and I'll fetch you back to this infuriating island."

Her counterpart was silent.

The White Rider smiled to herself and slipped into a mockery of the cheerful warmth she gave her husband and her friends. "You always did brim full with pride, brother _bach_. But you needn't be embarrassed. I'll know the truth soon enough and I'm sure you'd prefer to tell the tale yourself than let my inquiries rouse the interest of all and sundry. Least said, soonest mended and all that."

"Living with humans will be your ruin," the Black Rider said, all the icy wrath of midwinter in his voice. But then he added, grudgingly, "The Falklands. I woke in a sheep pasture. Merlion and his Sign-Seeker brat will rue that insult for centuries."

The White Rider let her laugh ring clear. "I doubt that sheep dung will be highest in their minds when we cast them out of Time for once and for all. But should you _wish_ to remind them of your shame, I will not stand in your way."

"I woke in a _sheep pasture_ ," the Black Rider repeated over a surge of static, "with a sheep attempting to eat my hair. It took me an hour to walk to the nearest excuse for a town and I spent all the power I had left to change my clothes to something less likely to attract prying eyes."

"And none left even to conjure payment for this call," the White Rider agreed. "How are the mighty fallen." She laughed again at the Black Rider's futile noise of rage. "Return to your sheep, for the trace of your power and Herne's will be strongest there, and bide an hour or three. I have a handful of things to put in order before I ride."

"Return? To the _sheep?_ "

"You may as well accustom yourself to their ways. Clwyd is a sheep farm, and you'll see much more of the beasts before you recover enough power and common sense for me to trust you out of my sight," the White Rider said. "And on that note, your name is Cadwallader Price. Practice sounding Welsh."

Blodwen hung up on her brother's outraged protests, and began to plan what tale she would spin for John and the others to cover her brief absence from the farm and the bad-tempered guest she'd soon be carrying home.

\---------------

A fortnight later, after Cadwallader Price declared himself more than recovered enough from both his pneumonia and his fever-induced car crash to escape his beloved sister's tender ministrations and drove his newly purchased car off in a furious squeal of tires, John Rowlands wrapped an arm around his wife and said, contemplatively, "Blod, _cariad_ , the man is your family and therefore mine, but I can't say I'm sorry to see the back of him. Never in life have I met someone more determined to find fault with his surroundings."

"He is not one for patience, nor for farms," Blodwen agreed. "Why do you think I agreed to live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sheep?" She swung her arm wide, the gesture encompassing the grey winter sprawl of Clwyd farm, from Owen Davies' house just across the little rutted track, up past the sloping pastures and hedges all the way to Cader Idris in the cloudy distance.

"And here I hoped it was because you loved a shepherd," said John, a smile audible in his voice though his face remained grave.

"I might have more reasons than one," Blodwen said, and leaned up to give her husband a kiss.


End file.
